


Mirror, Mirror

by JessaLRynn



Series: The Enigma Variations [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Introspection, New definition of talking to yourself, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Self-Flagellation, Ten!Too - Freeform, The Author Regrets Something, not really a song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 04:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15878259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: "I'm here, doing what we always did, what I will always do, and I still feel like you're living my life."





	Mirror, Mirror

The Doctor looked deep into the mirror, staring at his reflection, wondering if it was a bad thing that he found himself here so often. On the surface, he claimed that he was looking for changes, looking for signs of the promised aging that should go with the single heart tripping away quietly within his breast, reaching for eventual stillness. There was an end for him, after all, a stopping point, and in the meantime, there was happily ever after.

"Doctor," he murmured. His name, perhaps. She had let him keep it, after all, and her opinion was the only one that counted, since she knew the Doctor better than anyone had ever been allowed to do. He'd gone out of his way since then to ensure that completely.

He stared at his reflection until his vision swam, until his head felt strange, until maybe, just maybe, there was another man staring back at him. He wondered if their faces were the same, still. Never the same, probably, even if they were the same in theory. Nothing was quite the same.

"So you've gone on," he said to that other man, anyway. "Traveling the stars, seeing the Universe through the doors of a Police Box. And I'm here to stay. With the one we will always love."

He sighed. "There was a storm after you left. The morning sky went from grey to black in seconds. She believes you accidentally caused it. I think she did, her grief, the tears she wouldn't shed for either of us. Not that we deserved it then. Not that we ever will."

He put his hand up near the glass but refrained from touching it. Instead, he shook his head and wondered if the man in the mirror really held still to watch him. "We're happy here. We haven't got a house, we haven't got names. We haven't got any of the things you and I thought would make us happy. But we have each other. We're so in love everyone can see it. And we're bored. Not really with each other - there's always a new story to tell - but with everything, this day to day life. The things a domestic life expects of people in love. Maybe that's why they die so young. We never thought of it, did we? That linear time might be the culprit, this gradual wearing down, the endless sound of ticking and tocking and a single, beating heart. It never occurred to me before, but I think it may be that living an ordinary life is what kills them. That and, of course, trying not to die."

He offered a tentative smile, and maybe it was returned, or maybe he was mad, it didn't matter. "You're always right and time will probably prove you right about me, too. And maybe I'll live forever, since I can't seem to break our habit of throwing ourselves headlong into disaster. But it's not so bad. I have her."

His fingers brushed the glass, but he jerked them away again before the tandem illusions he was feeding could be scattered by proper sensory input. "You just sail away, no idea what you leave behind you. But I know now. I have your name and a face you'll wear for awhile, and I have your memories and your soul. But you're still the best of me, off running around saving the Universe. And you never wanted her to have to settle for second best. But what you are and what you were with her, that was my best, the best I could ever be, the best I ever had."

Now he touched the glass. "And you didn't want me."

He closed his dark eyes and let the moment and the illusion slip away, along with a single tear.

*?*

"Why is it," the Doctor wrote, "that I feel like I'm the one who isn't really me?" He sat alone at his desk, alone in his library, alone in the TARDIS, alone in the Universe. The letter he wrote could never be sent, could never be received, but he hadn't started it with the intention of anyone ever reading it. Rather it was to make himself feel better, about his choices, about his regrets.

Instead, he mostly remembered the girl.

"I'm here, doing what we always did, what I will always do, and I still feel like you're living my life." His desk was cluttered, with books and papers and forty kinds of writing utensils, with bits and bobs and projects that would never be finished. The detritus of ten lifetimes and then some gathered around him, but he still let nothing come between him and his paper and the mirror. It was a comfort to him in these weary hours, the illusion that he was not so alone as he made himself, that there was another man there, a specific man, the one the letter would never reach.

"I can't help but wonder what it must have felt like to go away with her into that morning. I can't help but wonder if I could have... but no. I can't even write that down, it's too hard. Any time I even think it for more than a few minutes, I want to run, run like we did before, like I did before, hiding everything inside diving headlong into disaster."

He stared into the mirror, willed the man beyond to read the words he scribbled backward in their nearly illegible handwriting. Even though he knew it was an illusion bordering on delusion, he willed it all the same.

"It's not so bad, not this time. I may be a phony, pretending to be the Doctor because there's nothing left, but there's the knowledge you exist. You'll haunt me, could be you'll haunt me forever. You, always, asking me what I wanted, when you should know, because you got it. And there's some part of me that hopes you're haunted, too."

He paused for a moment, then dashed out that last sentence, maybe not so heavily as he should do, though, if he really didn't want it read.

"This life that we love, it's boring. Saving the Universe every second Tuesday, dictators every Thursday for tea, Monday mornings with the invasion fleet of the hour, daily death threats, and the third Friday of every month, don't forget to pencil in the megalomaniac of the moment. And there's no one here to patch me up if I get hurt, no one here to stop me if I break, no one to care if I live or die or just exist, and inside... we'll just write that off as a lost cause, shall we, Doctor?"

He flinched at what he had just written, but he didn't move to retract it this time. It spawned another flurry of words, in fact, and he let them flow from his pen. "If I'm right, and I'm always right, you kept that, along with the best of me. You have her, along with everything I was ever proud of, everything I ever found truly good inside myself. She made me the best I have ever been, and I gave her you, knowing that you could live her life out with her, the life I wanted, the best I ever had. The best I never had."

He looked back at the swirls and spirals drawn so quickly across the page, black on white, the flowing symbology of their nearly dead language. Then he looked at the illusion of his insanity, and tilted his head to bid the man to read.

"You're me, only better, mortal, nearly human. And if I'm always right, then you were also right, and I made you. Out of the deepest and most secret desires of my wasted hearts. And I combined the two in you. So I'm here to stay, and alone."

He stood up, put down the pen, made to walk away, then turned back and stared at the image for quite some time, wondering how his face would look, older, wiser, stronger, loving free and open.

With resignation, he lifted the pen and wrote one last benediction. "And you didn't need me."


End file.
